“It’s an ER. They’re busy. We just have to be patient.” I’m slightly annoyed that I have to manage him right now. Miguel can’t take a vacation if there’s no parasailing at ten or snowboarding or mountain to climb.
“How much did you drink at Jo’s party?” He stops in front of me, arms crossed like when he’s coaching Rachel from the sidelines of the tennis court.
“I told you, a couple of glasses of wine.” I frown. “And a shot. A citronelle shot.”
“You did shots?” His eyebrows shoot up.
“Shot. Singular. Why? It was a party.”
“I’m just wondering. Sometimes you get pretty tipsy.”
“There’s a difference between tipsy and blackout drunk.” There was a handful of times in college when I drank so much I blacked out, but that was decades ago. I don’t drink like that anymore. No one my age does, at least not anyone I know.
“I didn’t say you gotblackout drunk, Caren. I said sometimes you get pretty tipsy, which you do.”
“I wasn’t drunk. I don’t feel hungover. I feel groggy. It’s different.”
“But it would explain a lot, right? How you fell and hit your head. It’s the most logical explanation.”
I begin to protest but stop when the doctor enters, carrying a folder.
“Good news,” Dr. Malik says. “There’s no bleeding on the brain.”
“Thank God.” Miguel exhales loudly.
“No skull fracture, no stroke.” He gives me a sad little frown. “But you’ve clearly suffered a concussion due to some kind of trauma to the back of your head. That much is obvious.”
“Do you know what caused it?” Miguel asked.
“No. That we can’t tell just from the wound.” The doctor shakes his head. “Let’s shift gears for a moment and talk about your memory. Earlier, you said you couldn’t recall anything about last night.”
I nod. “I remember up until about maybe eight, eight thirty.Then nothing until about—” I turn to Miguel. “What time did I get home this morning?”
“A little after six.”
“But you remember coming home?” the doctor asks.
“Yes, but nothing before that. I don’t even remember where I spent the night. I was wearing the same clothes as last night, as if I never went home and changed.”
“So, what you are experiencing is a specific type of amnesia called post-traumatic amnesia.”
I recoil at the words. Amnesia takes me back to the soap operas my grandmother loved—Guiding Light,General Hospital. “I don’t have amnesia. I know who I am.”
The doctor pulls a rolling stool closer to me and pats my knee. “I don’t want you to be afraid. This is not the stuff of movies where you don’t know your name or where you live. Post-traumatic amnesia can result from an injury to the head, and it can lead to the inability to remember events that took place directly before the event, which we call retrograde amnesia.” Dr. Malik pauses and looks at me intently to gauge how I am taking this. When he is satisfied I am not going to burst into tears, he continues. “It can also cause people to be unable to remember new information right after the event, which is called anterograde amnesia. Or it can be a combination of both types.”
“And I have both?”
Dr. Malik offers a gentle smile. “It looks that way.”
“Lucky me.”
“When is she going to recover?” Miguel asks. “I mean, she will get her memory back, right?”
“I know it’s hard to watch someone you love struggle likethis.” Dr. Malik looks up at him. “It can be very frustrating. One way you can help Caren is by talking through what she remembers, as she remembers.” He turns back to me and continues in a soothing voice. “You might want to keep a journal and jot down things as they come back to you. Sometimes memories return in fragments, other times in whole scenes. We have a support group here at the hospital for people who have experienced brain trauma. Talking to others can help you with some of those feelings of disorientation and anxiety.”
“You want me to go to group therapy?” I cringe at the thought. Over the past four years we have spent thousands on therapy for Rachel and therapy for me, so I can come to terms with feeling like I might have failed Rachel. “I’m therapied out.”
“Look, traumatic memory loss is not like tearing your ACL or breaking your wrist. Those injuries are obvious and straightforward to fix. Brain injuries are invisible to the eye, and the road to recovery takes time.” He smiles. “If not a therapist, I really recommend the support group to help you through what can be a very disorienting process.”